The first organizing meeting brought together the CTG MIII
research team with doctoral students from the University at
Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Administration and Policy
and College of Computing and Information.

The International Research Program in Cross-boundary
Information Sharing is a new initiative at the University
at Albany focused on building knowledge about
cross-boundary information sharing in an international context.
This innovative program is leveraging current research efforts
by connecting doctoral students from the Public Administration
and Policy and Information Science programs at the University
with the findings from a National Science Foundation funded
research project at CTG. In their dissertation research,
students will draw on research findings from CTG’s Modeling
Interorganizational Information Integration (MIII) study and
seek to contribute to the development of new theory in
cross-boundary information integration and sharing through
testing these findings in an international context. The students
and the CTG research team meet monthly to share knowledge
about relevant topics such as comparative research design
and developing culturally appropriate research methods.

Dissertation studies are underway in China, Jordan, and
Taiwan, with additional studies being planned in Mexico and
Saudi Arabia. In addition to meeting regularly for knowledge
sharing and coordination with CTG, each student works with
his or her own dissertation committee at the University at
Albany and with academic and practitioner partners in the
host country.

Dissertations in Progress

Lei ZhengPublic Administration
and Policy, Rockefeller
College of Public
Affairs and Policy,
University at Albany
Graduate Assistant,
CTG
Lei’s dissertation is focusing on cross-boundary
information sharing in product quality and food safety
in China. Through his dissertation research, he will
build a leadership mechanism model of cross-boundary
information sharing in product quality and food safety
in China, and then conduct a comparative analysis
between his model and the model developed in the
MIII project at CTG to identify and explore similarities
and differences.

Fawzi MulkiInformation Science,
College of Computing
and Information,
University at Albany
Graduate Assistant,
CTG
Fawzi’s dissertation is focusing on the impact of
authority, executive involvement, and leadership on
cross-boundary information sharing in response to
chaotic events. The events are two public health
crises—the outbreak of the West Nile Virus in the U.S.
and the case of water pollution in Jordan. Fawzi will
gather primary data in Jordan through semi-structured
interviews with top-level government executives who
played a key role in the crisis there and use secondary
data gathered from public health officials in the U.S.
through CTG’s MIII project.

CTG FOSTERING INTERNATIONAL STUDENT
COLLABORATIONS

Over the years, CTG has brought together students
from many disciplinary and cultural backgrounds.
They come to CTG as graduate assistants, visiting
students, and post doctoral fellows to actively participate
in information management projects in government and to
improve their research skills. While most move on after their
studies, relationships built on mutual interests have grown
into some very productive research collaborations.

One such relationship began in 2004, when Enrico Ferro
from the Istituto Superiore Mario Boella in Italy joined CTG
as a visiting student for six months. During that time, he
discovered mutual research interests with two other doctoral
students at CTG: Jose Ramon Gil-Garcia, who at the time
was finishing his studies and working as a graduate assistant,
and Natalie Helbig, who has worked at CTG for the past five
years and is planning to finish her dissertation in December
2008. They found mutual interest in the digital divide, which
they have cultivated into a productive and ongoing research
collaboration. The trio explore issues of the digital divide
and e-government using data from Enrico’s Institute, which
performs an annual information society survey.

While Natalie remains at CTG as a program associate,
Ramon, after finishing his PhD and spending a year as a
post doctoral fellow at CTG, has moved back to Mexico
where he is now assistant professor and director at the Data
Center for Applied Research in Social Sciences at Centro de
Investigacion y Docencia Economicas. Over the past three
years, Enrico, Ramon, and Natalie have worked together
through a variety of collaboration tools and successfully
authored five papers together on the digital divide and
e-government, including an entry in a research handbook
and presentations at several conferences. Their first paper,
Understanding the Complexity of Electronic Government:
Implications from the Digital Divide Literature is forthcoming
in Government Information Quarterly (GIQ).